Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/ – Input/output data processing – Peripheral configuration
Reexamination Certificate
2001-05-22
2004-03-23
Elamin, Abdelmoniem (Department: 2182)
Electrical computers and digital data processing systems: input/
Input/output data processing
Peripheral configuration
C710S010000, C710S015000, C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06711630
ABSTRACT:
COPY RIGHT NOTICE
Contained herein is material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction of the patent disclosure by any person as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all rights to the copyright whatsoever.
BACKGROUND
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to the field of networking. In particular, the present invention is related to a method and apparatus for communicating with plug and play devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Device drivers typically scan all the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots and buses when searching for a PCI plug and play network adapter in a plug and play operating system. Plug and play is an Intel standard for the design of personal computer expansion boards. Plug and play eliminates the frustration of configuring the system when adding new peripherals, and self configure interrupt requests, direct memory access settings, and memory addresses on startup.
Device drivers often use legacy operating system function calls such as, get adapter, get bus information, etc. in order to detect a PCI plug and play network adapter. Some versions of Microsoft's operating system do not support legacy operating system function calls for detecting and communicating with plug and play devices. Moreover, future versions too will not support legacy operating system function calls for detecting and communicating with plug and play devices.
Under Microsoft's operating system, a network device that fails to boot is declared invalid in the Windows registry, and the network adapter interface, i.e., the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) driver for the particular network device does not load. The NDIS driver allows network drivers invoked by application programs to communicate with network devices, e.g. network adapters. However, since the NDIS driver does not load, the network adapters cannot be accessed by the application programs. Moreover, because legacy operating system function calls are not supported by Microsoft's plug and play operating system, kernel-mode network device drivers are also unable to access the network adapters. This makes diagnosis of problems associated with the network adapters virtually impossible.
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White paper “About GUID's, Driver Technical Tips”.
Product Support Quantum Drives White Papers, Ultra160, Ultra320, and Ultra 640 SCSI, www.maxtor.com/Quantum/scr/whitepapers/wp_ultra320.htm, Oct. 11, 2000.
Dubal Scott P.
Schuettke Brian C.
Blakely , Sokoloff, Taylor & Zafman LLP
Elamin Abdelmoniem
Intel Corporation
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